ASCAP and YouTube Reach Multi-Year Agreement
Performing rights organization ASCAP has struck a new licensing and data collaboration agreement with YouTube. The multi-year agreement is said to achieve two important goals:
1. Increase overall compensation
2. More accurate and reliable data
Recently, ASCAP reached a strategy agreement with Nielsen and their landmark Blockchain initiative with sister societies SACEM and PRS for Music. Blockchain has become well-known for its use in payments systems for its ability to manage records without centralized governance – a characteristic that will be harnessed in this project to resolve conflicts between conflicting identifiers for the same work across multiple rights holders.
These initiatives, coupled with ASCAP’s vast database, will improve the accuracy and reliability of the metadata attached to works in the global market, moving them closer to making the essential links between the sound recordings and compositions. This is important because making those links means that more money ends up in the pockets of songwriters, composers and publishers.
For those of you who thought streaming would never be able to replace physical sales: In a recent study, the major labels are averaging around $9000 a minute from streaming in the first quarter of 2017 – that’s $540,000 per hour and $12.5 million every day!
